


be still my foolish heart

by drunkonyou



Category: CHASM (band), Harry Styles (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blink and you'll miss it, Blood and Injury, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, ambiguous time period, everyone's american, lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 07:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18191462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkonyou/pseuds/drunkonyou
Summary: Harry is a songwriter too scared to show his skill and Mitch is a musician who's just passing through





	be still my foolish heart

**Author's Note:**

> this one really went off the rails lmfao. also halfway through i feel like this fic loses some of its personality so feedback is always appreciated!!
> 
> title from almost (sweet music) by hozier

If Harry wakes to find his journal gone from the nightstand one more time this week he’s going to lose it. Like, _cause a scene so absurd he wakes all adjoining neighbors_ sort of lose it.

The only thing left atop the little table directly in his line of sight is a half drunk glass of water and his watch, which he brings close to his nose, squinting through the inky darkness of his bedroom at its scratched face. _5:43 a.m.,_  it tells him. It’s almost as if his body knew something was amiss; he’s up more than an hour before his alarm is set to go off.

Groaning, he presses his face back into the warmth of his pillow and wipes the drool that’s crusted in the corner of his mouth on the cotton case. And breathing a soft sigh to no one but himself he hauls himself up and out of bed.

The old creaky floorboards have started to grow colder in the mornings, a sure sign autumn is on her way, and Harry hurries to slip his feet into the pair of socks he’d gone to sleep in, shucked off sometime in the night and lost beneath his sheets. He fastens the old watch around his left wrist in its usual spot, the cracking leather band soft and pliable and familiar beneath his fingers. He switches the lamp standing in the corner on, pushes back the curtains to let the sunrise flood his room with vibrant color (though this morning he’s met with nothing but his own reflection), and makes his bed neatly and quickly. Routine. But instead of going out to the kitchen to put the coffee on, he veers off towards his roommate's bedroom.

The room is still and quiet when he pushes in, and the soft groan of the door sounds amplified. Clare is fast asleep atop her covers when his eyes readjust to the dark, mouth propped open and telephone brought in from the living room and sitting in a mess of cords on the carpet. Held open against her chest as if she’d fallen asleep reading it, is his journal.

Now there’s plenty of ways he could go about this. Pour the abandoned bottle of Coca-Cola left on the windowsill over her head? Plug in her record player and blow her eardrums out with one of his Pink Floyd albums? Or something a bit more sinister like sneak a red sock into her delicates? The possibilities are endless but with his sleep-addled bones, he settles on ripping the book from her lax clutch and a simple yet effective wet willy.

Clare startles awake almost comically, eyes wide and a confused line between her brows until her gaze lands on Harry and she squints up at him through the smudged makeup around her eyes. Her gaze flicks down to the book in his hands and back up to his face. She laughs unabashedly.

“Clare!” He stamps a socked foot on the floor and the room shakes with it. He may be whining but he’s just barely awake and hasn’t gotten any caffeine in his system yet so it’s justifiable.

 _“Harry!”_ She mocks, voice rough and barely-there from sleep. She rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms, smudging the makeup further. “I wanted to see if you’ve written anything new.”

“You say that every time.”

“And every time there’s something new.”

“Clare,” he shuts his eyes for a moment, “how many times do I have to tell you if I wanted you in my shit, I’d let you. This is _personal_. Do I have to buy a fucking padlock?”

“No, but if you really cared you wouldn’t leave it lying out in the open,” she sticks her tongue out like a child. Like she’s twelve instead of twenty-four. Harry hates her sometimes.

“I didn't know my bedroom was considered _out in the open_.”

“Hare-bear, come  _on_ ,” Clare’s voice follows him into the kitchen. She hops up on the round table in her tee and panties and he slaps his journal down on the countertop.

“Clare we _eat_ there.”

But she ignores him. “Your shit is _so good_ ,” she tells him matter-of-factly. “I keep telling you that! Even Sarah thinks so.”

He pauses, his mug halfway from its spot in the cabinet above the sink. “You showed _Sarah_? Sarah!”

“I only read her a couple.”

He sighs, shaking his head. An errant curl flops into his eye and he blows it back. “I never intended on showing anyone my stuff and now, like, twelve different people know about it.”

“Me, Sarah, and Nick aren’t _twelve different people,_ you goof.”

“What _ever_. God, you’re worse than a sibling. My own sister isn’t even this insufferable.”

She kicks her bare foot out and it hits him on the back of the thigh. “What’s gotten your pantaloons in a twist this morning, huh?”

He dumps more grinds than he needs into the coffee maker and some land on the counter. He'll leave that for her to clean up.

“Last time you stole my journal it ended up in the hands of a complete stranger, so forgive me if I’m a bit _testy_.”

“Okay, that was totally Nick’s fault.”

It was actually both of their faults. Nick’s lovely friend Pixie had set him up on a blind date with a gentleman who claimed to be a record producer, and Nick, after one too many drinks while on said date, managed to let slip the fact that his  _best friend Harry is an aspiring singer-songwriter!_ and promised to show him some of the songs he had written. Harry, unfortunately, was at work when the whole thing went down, stuck bartending at a shitty hole in the wall place he ended up leaving not two weeks later. He’d come to find out Nick brought his very sober date back to his and Clare’s apartment, who was home at the time and handed over Harry’s current journal in the blink of an eye.

Turns out Nick’s date wasn’t a record producer at all, but instead a struggling artist with an affinity for stealing others work who took Harry’s book of songs and almost made it across town before Clare and Nick caught up with him in what Harry could only assume was a car chase straight out of the movies. They managed to get the book back, thankfully, but only after Nick offered to trade him. Harry’s journal for the pair of concert tickets his sister had gifted him and Clare last Christmas. He clearly remembers Nick breaking down in drunken tears the minute he’d gotten home from work. Pixie to this day still can’t look him in the eye.

“Nick’s fault or not, I still don’t trust either of you.”

He can hear the faux pout in her voice as she says, “we just want the best for you.”

He snorts, sour mood lifting infinitesimally.

Clare kicks him again, this time with enough force that his knees knock into the knobs on the bottom cabinets. He braces himself against the counter. “Stop wasting your talent!”

This, too, is routine. Clare is always hyping him up, always trying to shove him out of his comfort zone with her little manicured hands. Then he'll have a cup of coffee, she’ll go back to sleep, and they won’t talk about it again for the rest of the day.

He reaches back and slaps her bare thigh playfully.

“Why don’t you perform one of the songs at that new bar on Lafayette?”

“I don’t sing,” he reminds her gently. “You know that.”

“My ass, you don’t sing. Put a bottle of wine in you and you’ll be singin’ till the cows come home. What if— _hey_ , what if you gave one of your songs to whoever’s performing tonight at that place? I heard they finally hired a live act.”

“And risk having my work stolen _again_? I’ll pass, thanks. I’ll go with you to the bar, though. Live music always beats an old jukebox.”

“Fine,” she slides off the table, her bare feet slapping against the linoleum flooring. “Fucker. Have a good morning at work, bring me back something tasty. And shower. You smell rank.”

And with a kiss on the cheek, she pads back into her room and shuts the door. Routine.

 

Harry rarely is out this early. The sun begins her ascent in a flourish of colors, painting the town in oranges and pinks and purples and lighting his way to work in a way he rarely experiences. He thinks it’s nicer live and in color than through his bedroom window as he dresses for the day.

Harry adjusts the strap of his bag against his chest and tips his face toward the sky. The awakening rays of light beat down on his cheeks and eyelids like a kiss good morning, warm and welcoming. He might have to start waking up earlier more often.

When he crosses the street away from the block of apartment buildings, Deacon the Florist is just setting up his cart on the corner, half hidden behind bucketfuls of varying flowers whose hues almost match the sunrise. Upon noticing Harry making his way down the sidewalk, he peeks around his collection of tall sunflowers and smiles, all crinkled eyes and cigarette-stained teeth.

“Morning, son! You’re early today, huh?”

“A bit,” Harry stops at the cart and swings his bag around to his front and begins to dig through it. “Thought I’d have breakfast at work today.”

Finally, he comes up with a quarter and flips it into Deacon’s awaiting hands. He picks out the brightest rose, cool to the touch and dotted with moisture, and brings it to his nose as he does every morning. He drinks in its scent until his chest grows tight and he exhales with a smile.

“Beautiful as always, my friend,” he pats him on the shoulder and Deacon blushes to the tips of his curling mustache.

“My favorite customer!”

Harry waves at him over his shoulder. He twirls the rose between his fingers as he continues down the long expanse of sidewalk, bidding good morning with a nod of his head to the local shop owners just opening up for the day. Some of them are sweeping in front of their stores, some flipping the signs on their doors from _Sorry WE’RE CLOSED_ to _Come in WE’RE OPEN_ and all of them return the greeting. When he finally reaches the café three blocks later, the lights inside are still off and the door is locked. His watch is telling him it’s only quarter after seven, so he pops a squat on the stoop outside.

Harry rests the fresh rose next to him and pulls his journal from his bag, the safest spot from wandering hands. After spending longer than he’d like fishing around for a pen, he cracks opens the leather notebook to a fresh page towards the back and presses the ballpoint to the first line. He takes a moment to think, tapping the pen against his chin. Finally, a line comes to him, then another, and another. He glorifies the morning on the paper in his hands, enhancing the glint of the rising sun on the tin rooftops of the buildings and accentuating the slight breeze and makes something melodic about it all.

When he’s filled nearly the whole page with his mediocre songwriting and chicken scratch, the crunch of shoes on concrete pulls his attention away.

There's a man standing over him, arms crossed high over his chest like he's cold, looking down at him from under the bill of an old baseball cap. Lack of sleep is evident from the purple shadows beneath his eyes.

“Are y’all open yet?”

His voice is soft and gravelly, almost lost in the rush of a passing car, and gum or tobacco bulges from the inside of his cheek.

“Sorry,” Harry says, stuffing his book and pen back into his bag when he catches the time on his watch, “we don’t open till eight.”

The man nods, slightly dejected, and gestures to the forgotten rose sitting at Harry’s side.

“Nice flower,” then he turns, walking back the way he came. As Harry is watching him go, frowning at the hunch of his shoulders, a voice cuts through from his other side and he turns to find Nick making his way towards him.

“Jesus, what the fuck are you doin’ here so early?”

He produces his set of keys from the pocket of his jacket and shoves Harry out of the way with his knees. Nick pushes the door open, the bell above jingling as its greeting to the two of them. Harry flicks on the lights.

“Clare being her usual self.”

He plucks out a dried rose from the crystal vase next to the tip jar on the counter and replaces it with the fresh one he bought this morning. He carefully stuffs the dried rose in a secluded pocket of his bag.

Nick laughs, shaking his head, and disappears into the little office near the back.

“Clare’s a real pisser, ain’t she?” He calls through the open door. He reappears a moment later with the till full of cash and pops open the drawer to the register, some old rusted thing he’d gotten from his father when he first opened the café that cooperates only half of the time, and drops the till in.

“It’s getting pretty old though, Grim,” Harry grabs one of the yellow aprons hanging on the line of hooks inside of the kitchen door and ties it around his neck and waist.

“You have to admit she’s got a point. Be glad it wasn’t me this time.”

Nick’s face appears in the little window between the kitchen and the main shop, and he’s got the worst grin. Harry avoids looking at him though, instead flicking the stove on and cutting a pad of butter into a pan. He knows Nick is watching him as he prepares breakfast for himself, can feel his eyes on his back the whole time, but still he doesn’t look his way. He'd like to go one day without his friends berating him. Even if it is out of love.

“H…,” Nick says with a laugh when Harry slides his two sunny-side up eggs onto a clean ceramic plate.

“Nicholas...,” he slices off a triangle of the loaf of fresh rye bread they baked the night before and slaps it down in the still-spitting pan. “I've heard this spiel many a time; just let it _go_.”

“You can't seriously want to work here the rest of your life,” the humorous edge to Nick’s voice has fallen away, replaced with something more stern that sounds dangerously similar to his mother.

“Are you firing me then?”

“ _God_ , you and Clare are the perfect duo, I swear. I'm being serious, Harry, you have the perfect chance to get out of this shithole and _do_ something with your life. You have talent!”

Harry puts his toast on his plate and shuts the crimson-glowing burner off. He still doesn't meet Nick’s eye.

“Are you hearing me?”

“Yes, Father,” Harry sucks butter from his thumb, shouldering his way through the kitchen door and out to the floor. He takes a seat by the window. The sun is fully up now, and in the wake of her rising lays a crystal clear sky. “I said just let it go, okay?”

Nick sighs dramatically from behind the counter. “I'll never understand you.”

 

Between Nick’s boy arriving to take his place and the lull in the dinner rush, Harry manages to collect his things and sneak into the kitchen to put together a doggie bag for Clare before he escapes for the day. She's been obsessed with their pesto grilled cheese lately, something Harry came up with himself last week, and is pleased to find Nick already has one ready for him when he pushes through the door.

“Thanks, man,” Harry tells him with a grateful nod, picking up the paper bag and curling it closed in his hands. “Hey, Clare mentioned that new bar over on Lafayette is having live music tonight and I think I’m gonna go. Do you and Mesh wanna come?”

Nick passes a steaming pasta dish under Harry’s nose that makes his stomach growl and sets it gently on the windowsill. He taps the silver bell. “Order up! We were thinking of having a quiet night in but if that gets boring we might stop in.”

On cue Mesh appears in the square window and takes the plate. He gives a goofy smile to the two of them and a more private wink for Nick. When Harry looks back to Nick, he’s still watching where Mesh stood with a dopey, lovestruck grin. Harry shakes his head.

“Whipped, Grimshaw. It’s disgusting.”

Nick sobers up and turns his attention back to the BLT he was putting together. His cheeks are red as apples.

As Harry’s pushing through the front door shoulder-first, not being able to help sneaking a peek into the brown bag that holds Clare’s sandwich, the door is suddenly pulled open, causing Harry to trip over the threshold and almost on his face. When he regains his bearings, hair in his face and heart in his throat, he looks up to find the perpetrator to be the guy from that morning, the one who complimented his rose. The shadows beneath his eyes are less conspicuous now, and he smiles a shy, delicate smile at him through the transparent glass of the door.

“Sorry, man,” he says, stepping around the door. “Just trying to be a gentleman.”

Harry is unable to find his words at first, instead grinning at the stranger and holding the doggie bag up to his chest like a schoolgirl holding her lunch.

“It’s okay,” is the only thing he comes up with.

They stare at each other for approximately five seconds, Harry anchored to the concrete under the gaze of this startlingly handsome stranger. He's a beanpole, with a long nose and a sharp jawline and a thin mouth surrounded by dark stubble. But then the guy is clearing his throat and nodding his head towards the inside of the café, breaking up what Harry was beginning to think was a _moment_.

“You mind if I go in? I'm kind of on my lunch break…”

Harry stumbles out of the way, embarrassed, and he’s off the block before the door even shuts behind him.

 

The mall is surprisingly quiet for a Friday afternoon, but Harry appreciates the calmness of it. When he reaches the third floor, humming the song that’s tinkling throughout the vast building from the radio, the smell wafting from the candle shop is so inviting he almost floats towards it like an old Tom and Jerry cartoon.

There’s not a single customer in the store, just Sarah behind the counter putting her hair up in a ponytail with a green scrunchie bigger than her hand, and when she spots Harry she blushes like she’s been caught red-handed. He suddenly remembers that Clare shared his writing with her last night.

“Hey, Sarah,” he greets evenly, already rummaging through his bag. “Clare here?”

She thumbs behind her. “Doing inventory.”

He produces the dead rose he’d plucked from its vase that morning, petals brittle and in danger of crumbling beneath his fingers. He hands the flower over to her and she takes it with a grateful and slightly embarrassed smile.

“Thanks.”

He knows he’d probably get kicked out were their manager there, and he’s thankful it’s just the two girls tonight. When he enters the back room, Clare is sitting on the floor, clipboard in hand and red pen held between her teeth. She’s staring at an unopened box in her lap. It doesn’t look as if she’s doing much of anything, really.

“Are you having an existential crisis over,” he leans over her to get a better look at the box, “ _Blueberry Scone_? Actually, that sounds pretty good.”

Clare looks up at him then, and he notes the smudged mascara has been wiped away from her eyes, instead replaced by a bold yellow eyeliner that stretches out from both her top and bottom lids. She looks like some ancient goddess. He should ask her to put some makeup on him one of these days. He’s sure Nick would have a field day if he showed up to the café in eyeliner.

“Have you seen Sarah?” She asks, quiet and slightly incredulous like she's telling him a secret, like this is high school and she’s passing on some hot gossip. Harry wants to laugh.

“Did you forget she’s running the desk?”

Clare pushes herself from the floor, grabbing Harry’s forearm for stability that almost pulls him to the ground with her. When they’re eye level, he can see there’s a slight flush to her cheeks that definitely isn’t makeup.

“She looks so cute today I had to hide back here for a few minutes to compose myself.”

Harry glances towards the shut door as if he’d be able to see Sarah through it. “I didn’t peg you as a turtleneck and corduroy type of girl.”

He gestures to her polo shirt and bell bottoms—which he’s pretty sure are his—and she slaps his hand away, the rings she’s wearing clacking against his own.

“The heart wants what the heart wants.”

He shakes his head. Clare has been in love with Sarah Jones for as long as she’s been working here, which means it’s been about two and a half years. Two and a half long _, long_ years.

It started as infatuation, with Harry hearing about the cute girl at the candle store nearly every night when she came home at the end of the day, but now it’s grown into something terrible. Like... _Little Shop of Horrors_ , or something. And after all this time, neither of them know what Sarah’s feelings towards his roommate are. They’ve never seen her date anyone, nor has she ever _spoken_ about dating. It’s frustrating and Harry wishes Clare would just bite the bullet already. He’s told her plenty of times if it goes horribly they can just move away and change their names, no harm no foul.

Instead, he has to deal with this pining mess.

Clare snatches the paper bag from his hands and they split the sandwich while sitting atop a pair of plastic, scuffed-up step stools.

Sarah checks on them not long after, peeking her head in and haloed by the bright store lights. She tells them she’s going down to the food court and asks if they want anything despite literally being in the middle of eating and Clare, mouth full of cheese and tomato, tells Sarah she’ll have whatever she’s having, and when the door clicks shut behind her she hangs her head in shame.

“I’ll bring home the leftovers.”

 

Harry hangs around the mall like he usually does until the end of Clare’s shift, popping in and out of the surrounding stores and stopping by his favorite kiosks to say hello and chat a bit. When the sun disappears from the skylights above and Harry’s watch is telling him it’s nearing eight o’clock he heads back over to Yankee Candle with a baggie full of varying samples (they always use them) and two Cokes from a nearby vending machine. Clare is ready and waiting for him when he arrives, jacket buttoned to her chin and very conspicuously watching Sarah as she dusts a high shelf of candles with a bright pink feather duster. The hem of her turtleneck has ridden up ever so slightly and Clare is practically drooling at the sight. It’s sort of pathetic to witness.

“You’re gonna catch flies,” he tells her when he reaches her. She snaps her mouth shut and turns to scowl at him.

They both wave goodbye to Sarah, and while she still can’t look at Harry without blushing, gives Clare a very flirtatious wink and a waggle of her fingers. Clare squeezes Harry’s hand until they reach her car out in the parking lot, stationed beneath a flickering light post, and he probably would have held her hand anyway considering how dark it is outside. Half-empty mall parking lots, especially at night, are genuinely terrifying.

When they’re both inside and buckled up and the styrofoam container full of Chinese food is sitting in the back seat, Harry says, “why don't you make a move already?”

Clare reaches for the radio and flicks it on, keeping the volume low. She shakes her head. “It’s not that easy.”

“Yeah, it is.”

She takes a particularly sharp turn away from the mall that sends Harry bracing himself against the passenger side door.

“Harry, shut up, it’s a very delicate process.”

“It’s been almost three years though—”

“You haven’t dated anyone since _1200 BC_! How would you know what it’s like?”

It stings, but it’s more than accurate. The last person he actually dated was right out of college, and it only lasted a month. Since then it’s been a coffee date here, a one night stand there, but nothing palpable. Nothing to write home about, really.

He decides not to tell her about his run-in with the handsome stranger at the café.

“That was shitty, I’m sorry, H.”

He hugs his bag to his chest and takes a swig from his Coke. The apology comes quicker than he anticipated; usually, when one of them hurts the others feelings, they'll go the entire day without acknowledging it and then crawl into the others bed at the end of the day and whisper _I’m sorry_ with a hug.

“It’s true though. But it’s completely by choice, you know.” That’s only partially true.

Harry can see her quirk a brow in the passing headlights of a car and steels himself.

“Is it?”

“ _Yeah_ , I need to focus on my career—”

“You mean the songs and shit you never show anyone? Harry…”

Somehow he knew it would come back to this, it always does. _Routine._

“It’s _scary_ , Clare. Putting yourself out there.”

She thumps her hands on the steering wheel and were it any darker out he would’ve thought she’d run something over. “That’s exactly what it’s like with Sarah! We’re in the same fucking boat, look at that.”

And then both of them are laughing until their heads hurt, and while neither of them really knows why they’re laughing, it feels good.

When they pull up to _Dickey’s Den_ (terrible, terrible name for a bar), Harry can hear music sneaking through the crack in his window. It’s muffled and incoherent until they step foot inside, and when they do they’re immersed in a loud, rocky song with a steady beat that gets Harry’s pulse quickening. On first glance it looks the bar is empty, but when they peak their heads around the corner they see everyone is actually crowded around the perimeter of a makeshift stage towards the back of the room like some bobbing, drunken fence. Harry can barely see the actual band behind the wall of people, but they definitely sound good.

While Harry wants to stay and listen to the band, who are surprisingly good for someone presumably unknown, Clare tugs on his sleeve. They take two seats at the near-empty bar and before their elbows even hit the counter the bartender is making his way up to them. He’s older than them, probably nearing his thirties or so, and he has a very handsome, inviting face with a big smile and small beady eyes surrounded by laugh lines.

“What can I get you two?” he almost shouts over the cheering of the crowd as the band finishes up their song and immediately starts on the next. Harry finds his gaze drifting back towards the music. At this vantage point, he can almost make out the actual group.

Clare orders something that Harry doesn't catch the name of, and Harry orders a glass of pale ale much to his best friend's distaste.

After passing Harry’s drink to him, the bartender, _Adam_ , as his name tag reads, grabs a glass from overhead and fills it with something a sickly green color that comes in a bottle that looks like it came from an antique shop. He doesn't even pretend to know what it is, but Clare takes it with a smile.

“So who’s the group?” Clare asks him, taking a small sip from her glass.

“I forget what they call themselves,” Adam says, “but they came knocking on the door this morning looking for a gig. The lead guy, uh, _Rick_ , or something, said they just came from Philly and are working their way across the country.”

“Ugh, that sounds _fun_ ,” Clare knocks her foot into Harry’s chair. “We should go on a road trip someday.”

He holds his hand out towards her and clenches his fingers toward his palm a few quick times. “Cough it up then.”

Halfway through their respected drinks an unfamiliar voice announces from the back of the room too close to the mic that they're going to take a quick break, and Harry turns to find the small crowd dispersing, some heading to the bathroom, some trickling up to the bar for a refill, and some leaving altogether, talking animatedly. Finally Harry gets an unobstructed view of the band and is surprised to find he recognizes one of its members.

The guy towards the front right edge of the stage with a stone-white electric guitar resting against his stomach is the guy from the café. The one with the baseball cap that nearly tripped him. Taking a long, nervous pull from his glass he tries not to think that it's the universe trying to tell him something.

Harry watches as he takes off his hat and shakes his short black hair out, then slips it back on the other way around so his face is shown off. He plucks a few random chords on his guitar that sound vaguely familiar, turning away from the rest of his bandmates, three other guys on bass, guitar, and vocals, and incidentally, Harry as well.

“Go talk to him,” comes Clare’s voice to his right, small and nearly undetectable in his ear. It’s the voice they reserve for just each other when they want no one else around them to hear.

He flushes violently, looking to his lap. He gets up from his seat then, but he doesn’t head to the stage despite there being a perfectly clear path between him and where the guitarist stands, instead veering off to the bathroom. He doesn’t even have to _use_ it, he just washes his hands and drags his damp fingers through his hair a few times, pointedly not thinking about the fact the cute stranger he may or may not have been thinking about all day is a _musician_. The universe must really think she’s slick.

Just then the door is pushed open, startling Harry more than he’d like to admit, and in walks, of course, _him_. He freezes when he spots Harry at the sink, and Harry stares at him wide-eyed through the mirror.

“Sorry...door wasn’t locked.”

“I’m on my way out,” Harry says, but makes no move to leave. Instead he’s stuck to the sticky bathroom floor the same way he was frozen in place at the café, completely locking up under the gaze of the stranger's brown eyes.

When he steps fully into the bathroom, letting the heavy wooden door close behind him, Harry’s heart jumps to his throat because for one naïve second he thinks he’s going to approach him, make a move on him right here in a bar bathroom like some movie cliché. But he just rakes his eyes down Harry’s reflection and slips into the single stall. Harry hurries from the bathroom, once again overcome with embarrassment. _Go talk to him_ , Clare had told him. Easier said than done, apparently.

Upon reemerging into the noisy bar, Harry is met with quite the scene from across the floor. There is a girl in a startlingly pink mini dress occupying what was Harry’s seat next to Clare, she’s almost _on_ Clare, trailing her fingers up her arm. The way Clare is leaning away so far to the point she’s about to go ass over teakettle is making his stomach sour. He wonders how quickly she snuck into his spot after he’d left for the bathroom; she must have been waiting for him to leave. He sets his jaw and makes his way to them.

Before he can reach them though a young kid, probably just out of high school or so wearing a T-shirt with the bars name handstitched onto the breast pocket, approaches the two girls with a plate of food balanced on his left palm.

“Did you order a burger, ma’am?”

The girl, with too much glitter in her hair and on her cheeks, looks over her shoulder at the server, dropping her touch to the middle of Clare’s back, who really does almost fall off her chair then. She gives the young waiter a cat-like smile, and in the tilt of her mouth Harry can tell she’s well past drunk.

“Sure did, handsome,” it comes out a purr. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes copper. “The second one is for her.”

Clare snaps her head up, straightening so the woman’s hand falls away. “I don’t eat meat,” and she splashes what’s left of her drink in her face. The bartender Adam barks out a laugh from the other end of the bar and the poor waiter scurries back to the kitchen looking terrified.

The girl, horrified, springs from her seat with an indignant yelp and hurries to the bathroom, almost toppling Harry over in her mortified haste to get away.

Harry makes his way to the bar as Clare begins wiping the counter off with her napkin where it’s been splashed with liquor.

“You okay?” he asks when he reaches her and sits on the leather-bound stool beside her.

She passes her emptied glass off to Adam, who fills it with the same strange drink. Clare definitely knows how to leave an impression on people, that’s for sure.

She smiles at Harry, completely unaffected. Relief makes his fingertips tingle; Clare is one person who knows how to hold her own. “Cool as a cucumber. Thanks for coming to my rescue, though, my knight in shining armor.”

Harry hopes she can’t see the blush on his cheeks in the dim lighting or she’ll never let him hear the end of it.

“I was just a witness,” he tells her. He notices the waiter left the plate of burgers and fries on the counter and he gestures to them vaguely. “What are we supposed to do with these perfectly good burgers now?”

“Share ‘em with the handsome guitarist,” she waves the soiled napkin in the direction of the stage where the band are all sitting cross-legged on the floor and fiddling with their instruments, tuning them and whatnot. The lead singer is chatting up a girl smoking a cigarette standing at the edge of the stage. The guitarist, who Harry would very much like to learn the name of, is still ignoring his bandmates, instead leaning over his guitar and writing on a legal pad.

“I’ve already made a fool of myself in front of him twice today.”

“Twice?” She asks, swirling her drink in her glass.

“At Nick’s after my shift, and then just now in the fucking bathroom.”

Clare slaps him on the shoulder, making Harry choke on the gulp of ale he was in the process of swallowing. “Third time's the charm!”

 _It's going to be a long night_ , he thinks, coughing into his fist.

 

At around nine-thirty, when the first wave of patrons is replaced with an equally raucous crowd and Clare and Harry are stuffed full of food and drink, the lead singer of the band, with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses holding his sweat-slick hair back from his flushed face, holds up a hand. The room quiets down considerably.

“We’ve been here all night,” he says. His voice is a song or two away from being completely wrecked, “and I just realized we haven’t introduced ourselves yet!”

A couple scattered whistles ring out.

“I don’t think we were expecting such a big crowd tonight, huh boys?” His bandmates all nod in agreement.

Harry twists around in his seat, leaning his elbows on the bar top.

The lead singer places his raised hand to his chest. “I’m Ricky Devereux, on drums we have T.J. Slater, on bass is Geoff Hodge, guitar is Mitch Rowland, and we are… _Cosmic Fire_!”

Two guys at a table in the corner burst into quiet laughter at the revelation of the band's name (which  _is_ pretty awful), but Harry pays them no mind because Mitch Rowland is looking at him. No, _smiling_ at him. There’s no show of teeth, it’s more of a grin, really, but Harry finds himself smiling back. Even when they start on their next song, a Queen cover, and Mitch shifts his focus back to his guitar, Harry is still smiling.

At quarter to Nick and Mesh arrive. They've dressed up a bit, Harry notices, in slacks and patterned button-ups, and they stand out in the crowd of T-shirts and jeans.

“Sue!” Nick shouts, pulling Mesh by the hand through the sea of tables and bodies, who’s staring in wonder as if he’s never been to a bar before. Though Harry hasn’t known him very long, so that may just be true.

“You made it!”

“I wanted to stay in and eat take-out over _Jeopardy_ but this one convinced me to come,” Nick bumps his shoulder into Mesh’s. And to Harry, says, “no offense.”

“Full offense, actually,” Mesh tells him. “He only gave in cuz of the live music.”

Harry rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Well they're pretty good, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear. They call themselves _Cosmic Fire_.”

“Harry has a crush on the guitarist.”

Clare sneaks up on them. She's been gone for the better part of half an hour and there's a lipstick print on her jaw.

Harry gives an indignant huff. “I do _not_.”

Nick and Mesh both stand on their tiptoes to get a better look at the band. Harry resists the urge to crawl under the bar.  

“He’s cute,” Nick concludes with a nod of his head. “Nice nose.”

“Yeah, he actually came into the café just after you left. Super cute.”

Harry scratches at the back of his neck, risking another glance towards the stage. Mitch’s eyes are closed as he plays. Harry is thankful.

Nick and Mesh order a plate of quesadillas to share and two pints of beer, and when they settle in at their table near the stage, Harry sitting with them against his will, the band is packing up to leave.

“They're done already?” Mesh asks, taking a swig of amber liquid. “We just got here!”

“I think the bar closes at midnight,” Harry tells them. “Plus they've been playing all night.”

Nick waggles his eyebrows. “Good stamina, that's what you want in a man, H.”

Harry is suddenly thankful of the loudness of the bar, or else one or more members of the band might have heard. He turns his back to the stage though, just in case.

The crowd dwindles significantly once the music ceases and the clock ticks closer to twelve, paying their bills and shaking hands with the band as they wrap wires around their arms and latch instrument cases shut. Mitch is the last one out of the building; instead of following his bandmates out the back door, Harry watches as he traipses up to the bar to shake Adam’s hand. Clare is there, drinking a cup of coffee, and she gives Mitch a once over. And then, of course, an approving nod of her head in Harry’s direction. He really, really hates his friends sometimes.

Adam presses a wad of bills covertly into his hand, and Mitch shoves it into his jacket pocket. Harry, because apparently he has no self-control whatsoever, openly watches him cross the floor and exit out the back door. Clare follows in Mitch’s wake, throwing her arm around Harry’s shoulders when she reaches their table.  

“Why didn't you ask for his number?” She's still sipping at her coffee, and her cheeks are flushed.

“He's a traveling musician, Clare. It wouldn't exactly go anywhere.”

“And you're an aspiring songwriter! It's a match made in heaven,” Nick exclaims.

Harry shakes his head, glancing towards the back door. “I've seen _A Star Is Born_. It didn't exactly end well.”

Clare gives a very prominent eye roll as she downs the rest of her coffee like a shot. “You’re impossible.”

 

For the first half of the week Harry regrets not getting Mitch Rowland's number, but he doesn't give Clare the satisfaction of knowing that. By Thursday he’s forced himself to forget about him, constantly reminding himself that the band is probably halfway to California by now, if they’re not already there.

It's Thursday afternoon when that all goes out the window though. Harry’s leaning up against the wall outside of Yankee Candle, waiting patiently while Clare wraps up a sale and clocks out for the day, when a familiar voice catches his ear. He looks up from his journal to find Mitch Rowland leaning against the glass railing across from Spencer’s Gifts, chewing on the plastic straw of the drink in his hand.

Harry can't believe his eyes, and he blinks a few times for good measure. He looks back into the candle store where Clare is still conversing with a customer, then back to Mitch. _Third time’s the charm._

“Hey, man,” Harry says when he approaches him, snapping his notebook shut and tucking his pen behind his ear.

Recognition instantly crosses Mitch’s open face. “You following me?”

Harry laughs. “Seems like it, huh?”

Mitch smiles, sucking on his straw.

“So, uh…you here alone?”

Harry realizes it's a stupid question to ask the moment it's out of his mouth but Mitch just gestures to Spencer’s with his free hand. “The guys are in there.”

“Harry!”

Clare waves from where she's walking out from the candle store, and she freezes when she spots Mitch.

“Uh, sorry,” Harry says, though he's not really sure why he's apologizing.

“It's cool,” Mitch tells him. And when Harry starts to back away he says, “oh, uh, we’re playing Dickey’s again tonight if you wanna pop in.”

Harry smiles.“Yeah, sure.”

Mitch smiles back. “Cool.”

When he reaches Clare she slips her hand into the back pocket of his pants and pulls him close, their hips bumping together.

“So how was _wooork_?”

She scoffs. “They stayed another  _week_. Please tell me at least you got his number since you were too chickenshit last time.”

“Nope.”

She hangs her head and he wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“I'll get it tomorrow night since he invited me to watch them play again at Dickey’s.”

Clare beams at him, then pulls her hand from his pocket and slaps his ass. “Don't screw this up.”

He laughs. “I'll certainly try not to.”

Third time’s the charm.

 

Miraculously Clare doesn't tag along to the bar like Harry thought she would, but when Cosmic Fire amble in minutes after he orders his first drink weighed down by equipment with Mitch Rowland in tow, Harry sort of wishes she were here. For moral support, obviously.

They play four songs, all equally loud and brash, before taking their first break. Harry quickly swallows the last bit of drink he had in his glass and spins to watch the band approach the bar.

Mitch sits on the  _thankfully_ empty stool at Harry’s left while the rest of the group claims the three to his right. In such close proximity Harry can see sweat beading Mitch’s brow, cheeks shiny with it, can smell the lingering scent of cheap cologne. He orders another drink, something just a tad stronger.

“Hey,” Mitch says when his bandmates all have glasses in their hands. His though are surprisingly empty.

“Hey yourself. Aren't you having anything?”

“I don't drink on the job.”

Harry hums. He's hyper aware of the way his knee is just barely touching Mitch’s beneath the counter.

“Where's your friend? The blonde one?”

The question surprises Harry. “Clare?”

“Yeah, her.”

“She's, uh, at home, I think.”

Mitch nods, and suddenly the air between them is thick with something Harry can't decipher. He doesn't like it though, so he asks, “how long are you guys staying here?”

“Dunno,” he drawls. He scratches at the scruff on his chin and Harry watches every movement. “Adam pays well.”

This is the longest conversation he's had with Mitch so far, and Harry is beginning to hear a bit of an accent, a bit of a drag of his vowels. It makes him sound like some southern gentleman, despite being from the Northeast. Harry likes it.

“I mean I’m looking forward to getting to California, don’t get me wrong,” he says it as if he’s trying to convince himself. “I just like...smelling the roses, I guess.”

He looks to Harry, watching for some sort of reaction from him. Harry swallows. He’s sure he’s blushing something fierce right now.

“The roses, yeah.”

There’s a sudden tug in his gut, some faint connection he feels to Mitch, and he thinks he knows what it means, but he doesn’t dare say it. It’s very precarious, this sort of situation. _Is he, isn’t he?_

Mitch looks away when Harry doesn’t say anything more, picks at the skin around his fingers. He looks quietly pleased though. Harry wants him to say something else.

“How long have you guys been a band?”

He glances briefly at his bandmates, and when he looks back to Harry there’s a faint scrunch to his nose. Harry definitely notices it.

“We’ve known each other for about a year now.”

“A _year_?” he asks, bordering on incredulous. “You seem so... _seasoned_ , though.”

Mitch throws his head back in a very sudden laugh, and it makes Harry’s heart swell in his chest. He continues.

“I mean, like, you seem like you’ve been together for a while; everyone here acted like they’ve heard you play before.”

“Nope,” Mitch tells him with a shake of his head. “We met last summer. Rick is my cousin’s husband, and the other two were his old roommates. Our families bullied us into performing together at the wedding.”

“Even though you didn’t know each other?”

He shrugs. “The hired band lent us their instruments and we did a run through of “Don’t Let Me Down” by The Beatles in the hallway outside of the reception and we realized we didn’t sound half bad. 

“And that’s all she wrote, huh,” he says.

“That’s all she wrote,” Mitch echoes with another disdainful glance to his bandmates. Harry has yet to refer to them as his friends; he doesn’t get the vibe. And he doesn’t ask about it. “T.J. mentioned how he and the other two always wanted to start a band, but their sound was _missing_ something.”

“Let me guess,” Harry says, “that something was you?”

Mitch winks—actually _winks_ at him, and says, “like a whip, you.”

Harry’s going to have a permanent rouge on his cheeks by the end of the night, he’s sure.

“I was the man of their dreams or somethin’.”

He leans in close like he’s about to tell Harry a secret, and Harry slides his upper body along the bar towards him. His heart hammers in his ears so loud he’s sure Mitch can hear it too.

“If we’re bein’ honest,” he tells him conspiratorially, “I don't remember ever consenting to this whole  _band_ shenanigans. It just kinda happened.”

And he doesn't say it in jest. No, he's completely serious and Harry suddenly feels bad for him. He can’t believe he’s entrusted him with such information.

But he doesn't get to prod any further, probably for the better, because Ricky is grabbing Mitch by the shoulder and yanking him upright.

“Are you hens done cluckin’? Our fifteen-minute break was over,” he looks down at his wrist where he's not wearing a watch, “five minutes ago.”

Mitch gives him a rueful smile. “Duty calls.”

This time the band performs all the way until close, without another break, and Harry really doesn't know how they do it; they must be fueled by alcohol and the cheering of the small audience. All he did was sit at the bar and eat and drink and enjoy the music and he’s exhausted when midnight hits. While T.J, Ricky, and—what was the bassist’s name?—all still seem to be full of energy when they bring their set to a close, he can tell Mitch is about to fall asleep standing upright. There’s sweat stains around the collar of his shirt and his eyes look heavy. This time he’s the first one out the door, not even gracing Harry with a glance in his direction as he hauls his guitar case out the back door. Harry tries not to feel too hurt by it.

 

Clare is still awake when Harry arrives home. Her door is shut and the light off, but music is seeping faintly through the crack, muffled and drenched with bass. She never falls asleep with her music on.

Harry hangs his jacket up on the rack next to the front door and toes his shoes off beneath it, next to Clare’s clogs and a slightly unfamiliar pair of Keds, and then he gets it. He glances towards the door again. He shouldn’t even be surprised that Sarah is there at this point; she practically lives here, wrapped up in Clare’s sweaters and eating their leftovers when they’re not looking.

As Harry gets comfortable on the couch with a bowl of cereal and a sitcom, he wishes he had Mitch Rowland’s number. They just barely know each other, had one semi-personal conversation that lasted a handful of minutes, but Harry is craving his company again already. Which sucks, because he has no idea if they’ll be here for another whole week or not. What are the odds of the band performing at Dickey’s for a third night? He should’ve at least asked where they were staying.

Or not, because that’s weird.

Amidst his brief bout of personal scolding, the door to Clare’s bedroom clicks open, releasing a sudden burst of Stevie Nicks and he looks over the back of the couch where she emerges with Sarah in tow. Sarah has her hands hidden in the sleeves of Clare’s old college sweatshirt (the college she only spent a year and a half at), and she pads across the floor to where her shoes sit. Clare watches her with a smile, leaning against the kitchen table.

When Sarah’s shoes are all tied up and she has one hand on the doorknob, she turns.

“I’ll call you later,” she says, softly.

Clare, cheeks a very obvious shade of pink, says, “yeah.”

And then she leaves, and Clare heaves a large sigh.

“Everything okay?” Harry asks cautiously, mouth full of cornflakes.

She startles, almost like she didn’t notice him there.

“When did you get home?”

He gestures to the television, where _I Love Lucy_ drones quietly. “About half an episode ago. Everything okay?” he asks again.

Clare rounds the couch and plops herself down beside him, causing his half-empty bowl to jolt dangerously. She rests her head on his shoulder. She smells like Sarah’s potent perfume.

“I think Sarah’s straight.”

He spoons more cereal into his mouth, unphased. “How did you come to that conclusion? Did you finally have _the talk_?”

She huffs, burrowing herself further into his collarbone. “She told me she met a guy at the mall yesterday after her shift ended, in the food court.”

“Romantic.”

He gets a swat to the arm that jostles his cereal again. He finally places his bowl on the coffee table, out of harm's way.

“I’m sorry!” He says, laughing. “Did she say he was, like, hot, or something?”

Clare hides her face in his neck. She's nearly in his lap now. “No...but she said they  _really hit it off!_ That smells pretty hetero to me.”

“I think you’re paranoid. Believe it or not, boys and girls can be friends. Look at us.”

She snorts.

Harry pats her leg affectionately. “I think your window is closing.”

She whines. “This shit is so _hard_ though.”

“If it makes you feel any better me and Cute Guitarist had a nice little conversation tonight but he didn’t even say goodbye before they left.”

“Did you get his number?”

“...No.”

She sighs. “We really are useless, huh.”

This time Clare really does crawl in his lap and her knee just barely misses his crotch. Harry turns the volume up on the television with the remote control and props his legs up on the coffee table.

When Lucille Ball is asking from the small TV screen if you _poop out at parties_ , Clare shifts in Harry’s lap so she’s looking up at him and asks, “do you think Cute Guitarist stayed for you?”

His stomach drops with the question. That’s—that’s impossible. They don’t even know each other, why would he halt his cross country tour or whatever for  _him_?

“He didn’t,” he tells her, unsure. “He said the owner pays well; they probably just needed a few extra bucks before they continued on their merry way. I’m sure they’re on the road now.”

_I just like...smelling the roses, I guess._

Clare gives him that  _look_ , the one that clearly says  _sure, Jan_.

“He didn’t even say  _goodbye_ ,” he says again.

Clare stares at him for a moment longer before shifting her focus back to the television. “Maybe we should just date each other.”

He laughs. “I’m sure our parents will be thrilled.”

 

The sun barely rises the next morning, hidden somewhere beneath the slab of gray sky that hangs overhead. Fat drops of rain hit Harry’s shoulders on his walk to work, soaking through the cotton of his sweatshirt and leaving him wet and unhappy. When he reaches Deacon’s corner, the florist is nowhere to be found, instead, the spot where he usually sits is vacant, and it makes Harry’s heart sink a bit. All of the shops he passes are open, but their doors are shut against the weather. He tries not to let himself feel too bad over Mitch’s speedy departure last night, or the fact that the band is most definitely gone now, but the weather amplifies the feeling.

By the time he reaches the café he’s chilled to the bone and almost dreading the day ahead. He has the urge to call a cab and crawl right back into bed with his journal but Nick is as lively as ever, greeting him with a kiss to the cheek and a warm mug of freshly-brewed coffee prepared just the way he likes.

“Do you think Mesh can spare you?” Harry jokes, taking a grateful sip of the hot drink. It burns its way down his throat, but it’s welcoming.

Nick, without missing a beat, says, “he doesn’t mind sharing.”

Harry rolls his eyes, taking another sip from the ceramic mug. When he looks towards the counter, he notices there is not one, not two, but three withering roses in the turquoise vase. It adds to his poor mood.

He stays in the kitchen before opening, scrubbing the appliances down and organizing the utensils just so he doesn’t have to look out the window and see the gloomy weather. He finally emerges when he hears Nick unlock the front door and takes his place behind the register.

“I think we need some music today,” Nick says matter-of-factly. He makes his way over to the music system sitting on the windowsill and flicks it on. Some group Harry doesn’t recognize blasts from the small speakers, but the energy in the room livens considerably. Nick, bopping his head along with the song, pulls the shades down over the windows. He shoots Harry a smile as he does so.

“Clare told me what happened between you and that guitarist last night,” he says and Harry sighs.

“She really doesn’t know how to keep her mouth shut, huh?”

“Hey, now…,” he admonishes. “She was telling me about her love life and, obviously, the conversation shifted to your favor. But listen, H.”

Nick comes up to the counter and leans his elbows on it. “If it’s meant to be then it will be.”

Harry makes a face. “That was weird.”

Nick laughs, waving it off. “You’re right. Mesh has been making me watch too many dramas lately. But I stand by what I said!” He waggles his fingers on his way into the kitchen. “Fate works in mysterious ways.”

The morning drags on slow as molasses. The dreary weather is keeping the masses away, only bringing in a customer here and there that will sit for a nice cup of something warm and a pastry and then they’re braving the rain again. The music is the only thing keeping Harry going, really. Music and coffee and the fresh batch of donuts he and Nick have been consistently munching on. With the shades drawn and the heat going the cafe feels like a little safe haven, a little bubble he doesn’t want to leave. He almost forgets about Mitch Rowland.

When the rain starts coming down harder, Nick and Harry retreat into the kitchen with a deck of old playing cards. There isn’t a single soul in the café, and just as Nick is mentioning closing up early, the little bell chimes above the front door. He hops down from the counter and tells Harry to shuffle the deck.

“Well look who it is.”

Harry strains his ear as he shuffles the cards. He can hear a faint laugh and then—

“Hey, man.”

And it’s Mitch fucking Rowland. Harry is off the counter in a flash, peeking around the corner onto the main floor to confirm what he already knew. There stands Mitch in front of the counter, gazing up at the chalkboard menu on the wall behind Nick's head, who’s staring at Mitch with a sly grin.

 _“Ha—”_ Nick starts to call out for him but cuts himself short when he notices Harry hiding in the kitchen doorway. He waves him over with a grand, embarrassing wave of his arm. Harry sheepishly makes his way to Nick's side, who wraps his arm around his shoulder like a father showing off his son. Harry wants to disappear.

“Hey, I was hoping I’d catch you here,” Mitch says, and Harry refrains from tucking his face into Nick’s apron.

“Good to see you again,” Harry says, voice an octave higher than expected. He clears his throat. “Can I, uh, get you something to eat? It’s close to lunchtime, I think.”

Nick elbows him in the side. “Hey now, that’s my part.” He looks to Mitch. “What can I get you?”

Mitch unzips his jacket, and Nick pats Harry on the backside, startling him.

“Go take his jacket. We’re all about hospitality here.”

Harry rounds the counter and takes Mitch’s jacket from him, damp and smelling of rain, and hangs it up on the rack near the door. He can feel the heat radiating from the back of his neck. Fate must really be onto something to be putting him through such torture.

Mitch orders a plain black coffee (which makes Nick’s lip curl) and a hot open-faced turkey sandwich. Harry, cards still in hand, slips back into the kitchen to prepare the sandwich. He can hear Nick making conversation while he pours him his drink, asking him where he’s from and where he’s going and if he’s got a girl in either place. Harry strains his ear over his cooking to listen for the answer, and all Mitch says is _“no, no”_ and it makes Harry happier than he’d like to admit. Even though it still doesn’t answer the  _is he, isn’t he_ dilemma.

When he carries the plate from the kitchen, hot enough that it’s burning the palm the plate is balanced on, he finds Mitch at the table in the far corner, leaning back against his chair and staring at the drawn blinds. There’s a black book on the table next to his hands, and Harry stops dead in his tracks when he realizes it’s his journal.

At the squeak of shoes on tile Mitch looks up, placing his palm on the cover of the notebook. “I’m guessing your last name is Styles?”

Harry approaches the table slowly. He sets the plate down and snatches the book up when Mitch pulls his hand away to take a sip of his coffee. At first, he thinks with a sick feeling in his stomach that Nick planted the journal there, waiting for Mitch to find it, but then he realizes that it was him who’d left it there at the table before he and Nick went to play cards in the kitchen. He holds the book behind his back.

“I didn’t look at it, I swear,” Mitch tells him. The constriction in his chest loosens up but his ears still feel hot.

“It’s not, like, a diary,” he says stupidly.

Mitch shrugs. “I wouldn’t judge you if it was.”

“He writes songs!”

Harry flashes Nick a murderous look, who just beams and shrugs like he’s done nothing wrong.

“Oh, really?” Mitch asks curiously.

Harry closes his eyes a moment before turning back to him. He squeezes the leather binding of the journal in his hands. Mitch is watching him expectantly, face open and curious as he chews on his food.

“Yeah, it’s just, like, a hobby. I'm not really good at it.”

Nick slaps his hand on the front counter, startling Mitch but not fazing harry.

“Can you not be humble for once in your life?” Nick says, exasperated. “Man, he is  _so_ good. So good. I cried when you showed me that one song, what was it called? _Just a Little_ -”

“ _Nicholas_.”

Mitch laughs. “I write too. We should swap recipes sometime before I leave. If you want.”

And Harry wants to. As crazy as it sounds, as much as it surprises him, he actually wants to. He tightens his grip on his journal.

“That sounds great, actually.”

And the smile Mitch gives him is unmatched. “Sick. Tonight work for you? I think the rest of the guys are going out.”

“Tonight, sure. My place, or…”

“The motel we’re staying at is kind of shitty, so maybe we could chill at your place?”

Harry immediately makes sure to kick Clare out beforehand. “Works for me.”

 

Harry has just barely handed over the handful of dried roses to Sarah when Clare appears from the backroom of the candle shop and jumps him.

“Where’s the fire?” He says, grabbing her arms so they both don’t topple over onto the carpet.

“You have a _date_?”

He stares at her for a second, then it clicks. “Fucking Nick.”

“He called me from the café and told me Cute Guitarist stopped in for lunch and he’s _coming over tonight_.”

Harry glances to Sarah, but she’s wrapped up in conversation with a customer, cradling the dried roses carefully in her hands. He pulls Clare aside though, just in case. “It’s not a date.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s, uh,” he pauses, “a jam sesh. Or something.”

“I absolutely don’t believe this,” there’s a smile in her voice. “You wanna kill Nick and me for reading your shit but the second a hot guy bats his lashes at you you’re giving it up without a second glance. I should be insulted!”

“It’s not like that, Clare. He’s just passing through, remember? Perfect opportunity to get an outsiders opinion and not have to worry about the embarrassment if he thinks I suck.”

She crosses her arms below her chest. “I thought I was the brains in this operation.”

He pats her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’re still smarter than me.”

 

After changing into something nicer that Clare keeps calling Harry’s  _date-wear_ (it’s not, it’s just something he wears on special occasions, that’s all), he kicks her out and sets out on straightening up the apartment. _Not a date, not a date, not a date_ , he keeps telling himself as he vacuums the carpets and dusts the windows and wipes down the counters. It’s just...they don’t have company very often. So.

When the clock above the sink strikes seven o’clock, Harry straightens himself out and plops down on the couch. He sets his journal on the coffee table, followed by two older notebooks that are filled to the brim with songs he deems good enough for a stranger’s eye. He flicks the television on, then off not a minute later. He rearranges the books on the table. Picks lint from his jeans.

There’s a knock at the door a few minutes shy to seven-thirty.

Harry springs from the couch. Mitch stands in the hallway with his guitar case in one hand looking like a drowned rat, but there’s a smile on his face Harry can’t help but return. He steps aside to let him in and takes his sopping coat from him, hanging it up beside his own and not minding the way it drips onto the wood floor.

“Get here okay?”

“Yeah,” Mitch says, toeing off his boots after getting the okay from Harry. He pulls his sopping knit hat off and hangs it on the empty peg over his coat. His hair sticks up in three million directions and he uses his free hand to tamp it down.

Harry inches into the kitchen where a bag of Chinese food sits. “Are you hungry?”

Mitch hasn’t stopped smiling that coy smile of his and it makes Harry’s veins buzz. “Yeah.”

Harry brings the bag into the living room and settles it on the coffee table. Mitch lowers himself onto the couch and helps Harry unpack the food.

“So,” Mitch starts after everything it set out, shoveling a forkful of broccoli and beef into his mouth. He unlatches the instrument case at his feet and pulls an acoustic guitar out that Harry hasn’t seen him play before, “wanna hop right into it?”

Harry’s stomach drops. “You go first.”

Mitch laughs under his breath and settles the guitar on his lap, shifting on the couch into a more playable position. With his bare fingers, he begins to pluck a slow tune, letting his eyes fall shut. He doesn’t sing along, just strums the chords for a minute or two, but  _damn_ , it’s pretty. It’s really pretty.

“That one doesn’t have lyrics yet,” he says when he stops playing. He rests his arms on the top of the guitar.

“It’s really good though, I like it. Why don’t you and your band do some acoustic songs?”

“They hate slow numbers. They say it’s not _Cosmic Fire’s sound_.” He laughs ruefully, dragging his thumb down the guitar strings.

“I get the sense you don’t really like that band of yours, huh?” Harry squeezes his knees as he says it.

Mitch hums noncommittally. He reaches towards the small pile of notebooks sitting on the coffee table. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Harry glances at the books. He picks up the one on top, the oldest one, with it’s faded cover full of doodles and cracked spine. He rubs his thumb along a messily drawn star as he passes it to Mitch, who takes it gingerly like it’s something of high value. In Harry’s eyes though it’s just something he vomited all his post-college angst into, full of scribbled lines about feeling lost and the vastness of tomorrow. Harry knows what’s in there is naïve and silly, but he doesn’t mind a pair of strange eyes reading over any of it. He knows he’s gotten better since he closed that book for the last time.

Mitch carefully opens the brown notebook to the first page, held so, so precariously in his hands like it’s an antique. Harry watches as his lips shape around the words on the page, the words  _he_ wrote. He reads through a few pages, and eventually his eyes find their way back to Harry’s face, and he grins that damn grin.

“I like it,” he says simply. Harry looks at his knees.

Mitch leafs through a few more pages, then hands Harry back the book. He keeps his palm upturned, waiting for more, and Harry swallows down the urge to tell him that it’s his turn. He hands over his current notebook, three-quarters of the way filled with a pen tucked into his most recent work. Mitch’s eyes light up when he takes the book into his lap like this is what he’s been waiting for. He opens it and flips through the pages like a man on a mission.

“What are you looking for?” Harry asks him, wringing his hands in his lap.

“That one your friend from the café mentioned. The one that made him cry.”

Harry sucks in a breath. He figures he really has nothing to lose when he tells him, “it’s towards the back.”

Mitch finds the page moments later and spends longer than Harry anticipated reading it. He seems to be reading it more than once, raking his eyes over and over the lines, soaking it up, taking it all in. The extended silence is making Harry’s palms sweat and all he wants to do is say _“well?”_

Finally, Mitch picks his head up. His brows have disappeared beneath the wisps of hair that have fallen over his forehead from having his neck bent for so long.

“Fuck, that's good.”

And before Harry can respond, he's diving back in, eagerly reading song after song and taking bites of food every so often. Harry's not sure how to handle such a reaction, but he's sure his ears and cheeks are an ungodly shade of red as he picks at his chicken fried rice with a pair of chopsticks.

After what feels like an eternity, Mitch meets his eyes again and says, “you're kind of incredible, Harry.”

It's the first time Mitch has said his name, and it  _kind of_ makes Harry want to melt into the couch. “Thanks.”

Mitch hands him the book back. “I would love to hear some of these. How do they go?”

An overwhelming sensation suddenly takes hold of Harry, and he feels the strange urge to kick Mitch out. Too much too soon, he supposes. He's definitely not used to this type of feedback.

“It's uh, getting late,” he goes to check the watch around his wrist and finds his arm bare. He never forgets to wear his watch.

He begins cleaning up their empty take-out containers, sweeping forks and soiled napkins into the to-go bag.

“Harry,” Mitch says with a laugh. _God_ his name sounds so good in his barely-there accent.

But Harry finds himself unable to answer, instead very invested in cleaning up. When he's in the kitchen, shoving everything into the trashcan and tucking the leftovers in the fridge, he hears Mitch playing his guitar. When he’s washing his hands, Mitch begins to sing, and he begins to sing  _his_ song. It’s one he wrote after his last break-up when his heart was splintering in his chest and he felt lost in his feelings. Mitch is barely singing it, more just speaking the lyrics as he attempts to pluck a tune on his acoustic guitar but it makes Harry stop in his tracks. He shuts the water off, dries his hands on his pants, and traipses back into the living room.

When he positions himself on the couch across from him, Mitch smiles at him, brushing his fingers down the strings. “I’m just pulling these chords out of my ass.”

“No,” Harry tells him, “it’s good. Keep going.”

Mitch begins strumming gently again, whispering Harry’s song. As he plays, Harry finds himself butting in, correcting him, revealing how he really wants it to sound. Mitch complies, plucking different tunes until Harry excitedly nods his head and says  _yeah, like that_. Eventually, Mitch half-jokingly offers his guitar to Harry, telling him he knows his songs better than him, but Harry says he’s never played an instrument in his life. If his brief stint with the violin in elementary school doesn’t count.

“I just write,” Harry says with a shrug.

“Do you sing?” Mitch asks him.

Harry thinks back to what Clare had said and reveals haltingly that yes, he loves to sing. Mitch begins to strum the almost perfect tune louder.

“Sing for me then.”

Harry swallows. “No, I…”

“Oh, come on, now. I wanna hear what these songs sound like in your head. I know it’s better than this.”

Harry watches him steadily for a moment or two before, of course, giving in. Why not just throw it all on the table? He reaches for his journal and opens it to one of the more recent songs he’s written, one he always imagined to be strictly acoustic, and begins to sing. He closes his eyes as he does so, leaving the journal open for show since he has almost everything he’s written memorized already. Eventually Mitch joins in with his guitar, matching the tune Harry is quietly singing, and by the end of it Harry’s heart feels like it’s going to crawl right out of his mouth and land at his feet.

He opens his eyes and avoids Mitch’s gaze. He reaches over and flips the book shut. He’s anxious to hear what he says for he’s never sang anything he’s written before, not even for Clare, who does nothing but beg him for it. Mitch hums softly, thoughtfully and raps his knuckles against the hollow edge of his guitar.

“Let’s do it again,” he says.

Harry swallows around the lump in his throat and nods, shifting his weight on the couch and wiping his palms on his knees. They do the song again, this time Mitch adding in extra notes here and there, veering off the original tune Harry presented him with, and it gives the song more of a personality, brings it exactly where Harry always imagined it going. And at the end of the second run-through Mitch is nodding approvingly, and when he meets Harry’s eyes there’s a light behind his own. Harry lets out a laugh, suddenly full of energy, veins buzzing with excitement. He never realized how electrifying it would be to have actual music put to his lyrics. He feels like a proud parent.

Before Mitch can open his mouth, Harry asks him if they can do another, and then another, and by the end of the night, when the clock above the kitchen sink reveals it’s actually morning, they’ve polished off four songs in total and Harry is more than pleased. He feels like he’s teetering on the edge of something amazing, and that feeling doesn’t go away when he crawls into bed an hour or so later. He’s not even sure when he falls asleep.

Clare returns home the next morning when Harry is sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, enough left in the pot for his roommate. She looks less than rested and dressed in an outfit Harry has never seen her in before. He assumes it’s Sarah’s, going by the corduroy. She pours herself a cup of freshly-brewed joe and leaves it black, squeezing Harry’s shoulder before sitting at the table across from him.

“Well?”

And he vomits everything that transpired the night before in a single breath and by the end of it, when his cheeks are sore from the width of his smile, she nudges his foot under the table.

“I’m so happy for you,” she tells him, sipping from her mug. But her voice betrays her.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, dropping his smile.

Clare shrugs and rubs at her naked eyes. “Last night was extra platonic. Sarah made me sleep on the _couch_.”

Harry makes a face. “Why didn’t you just come home then?”

“And crash your date? I’d rather be stuck in an unrequited hell than be a third wheel, thanks.”

Harry sighs and closes his journal that he had open at his elbow. “Clare—”

She swallows the rest of her coffee and pushes herself to her feet, the legs of the chair scraping against the linoleum. “I only stopped by to hear how last night went. I have to get to work. Congrats on copping a boyfriend!”

Harry tries to tell her Mitch isn’t his boyfriend, they’re just musical partners, but the door shuts behind her before he can get the chance.

 

Where Harry was afraid of never seeing Mitch Rowland again, he suddenly finds himself spending every free moment with him. Mitch mentioned how Cosmic Fire has been snagging small gigs all over town to whoever will shell out a decent amount of cash, and Harry ends up picking up extra hours at the café due to the increase in business as the weather grows steadily cooler, and in the brief gaps in their schedules Harry finds himself nearly attached to Mitch’s hip.

Mitch will usually grab breakfast at the café and chat up Harry under Nick’s hawklike gaze, then pick Harry up for lunch and they’ll eat on the metal bench near Deacon’s corner who sticks flowers behind their ears before packing up for the day. He keeps the flowers, lilies, daisies, sometimes baby’s breath, and stick them in a mason jar in his bedroom window. Sometimes they’ll catch a movie at the shoddy little place near Harry’s apartment, sometimes they’ll sit out on the libraries front lawn with nothing but a guitar and a notebook, and sometimes they’ll futz around at the mall while Clare works.

Clare, on the other hand, has done nothing but moped at the revelation of Sarah possibly having a boyfriend, and it’s a stark and slightly alarming contrast to her usual bubbly take-no-shit personality. Harry’s tried everything he can think of make his best friend feel better. He’s invited her, more than once, to come with him and Mitch on one of their escapades (though she refused every time), bought an abundance of her favorite snacks from the farmer’s market, and even Mitch, who isn’t very familiar with Clare and even seems to have a slight problem with her over something Harry can’t understand, tried to serenade her with her favorite songs on guitar. But all she wants to do is hole up in her bedroom when she’s not avoiding Sarah at work (which is sort of impossible considering the candle store is the size of their living room) and insist she’s fine. Harry figures there’s nothing more he can do but let her deal with this on her own, even though he really, really, doesn’t want to.

“She’s my best friend,” Harry says to Mitch one day while they’re sharing a milkshake from McDonald’s sitting on a cement block in the parking lot. If Nick knew they were at such an establishment he would kick Harry’s ass from here till next Tuesday. “I feel bad since I’m spending all my time with you. Like I’m cheating on her, or something.”

Mitch’s brows furrow in a way that Harry knows he should probably ask about, but doesn’t. He sucks on his respective straw before replying. “She should just talk to this guy she likes.”

And if Clare knew he told Mitch she was heartbroken over a _guy_ she’d probably murder him.

“I’ve been saying the same thing for the last few years.”

Harry decides not to bring Clare up anymore, because for some reason he gets the sense the topic annoys him.

One day while they’re squeezing through the cluttered aisles of one of the local antique stores on one of Harry’s much-awaited days off, another finished song under their belts, Harry voices a concern that’s been tugging at his gut lately.

“Hey, Mitch?” He says quietly. They’re not even at the library but he feels like if he raises his voice too much he’ll disturb the valuables. Mitch peaks through a gap in the rickety wooden shelf where he stands in the next aisle over and raises his brows for Harry to continue. “Does the band know what you’ve been up to? What we’ve been up to?”

He hasn’t so much as seen the other members of Cosmic Fire outside of Dickey’s, and for some reason Harry feels like Mitch is hiding him from them. And the thought makes panic rise like bile in his throat because does Mitch know? Is he aware of who Harry is and is embarrassed for his bandmates to know? Is he protecting him?

Mitch picks up a music box from the shelf and begins winding it up. “Nah. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, and in turn won’t hurt us.”

Harry freezes ever so slightly. “What?”

Mitch let’s go of the metal dial on the bottom of the music box and sets it back down on the shelf. “Clair De Lune” tinkles from its inner workings softly. “They’re dead set on Cosmic Fire. If they found out I’m...branching out they’ll be pissed.”

Harry rounds into the aisle Mitch is in and comes up to his side. He catches sight of the music box and runs his fingers along its marble lid. “Would they kick you out?”

Mitch barely looks at him. “Probably. They’ll leave me here in the middle of nowhere. Which might not really be a bad thing now that I think about it.”

Harry chooses to ignore the swirling feeling in his belly, all concerns flying straight out the window with the comment.

 

Not two weeks later Clare claims she’s moved on from Sarah, but the moment she says it Harry knows it not to be true. She’s been in love with this girl for over two years, there’s no way she can just quit her cold turkey. So Harry invites Clare to the club Cosmic Fire is performing at that night so she’s not left to wallow in her poorly-hidden self-pity at home. She dresses up in a way she only does when she’s trying to impress someone, in a sleek leather jacket she treasures from a secondhand shop back in college and a pair of shorts that are definitely too short for the steadily growing cooler weather.

The club is small and seedy and smells like sweat when they arrive. Tobacco smoke clogs the air and it makes Harry’s nose tingle. Clare, looking five seconds away from blowing chunks, hurries off to the bar. Harry stands on his tiptoes and looks over the crowd. He finds Mitch at the back and weaves his way towards him.

“Hey, Mitch!” Ricky looks over his shoulder at Harry’s voice where he was chatting with Geoff and gives Harry a once-over before turning back to his friend. Harry ignores the look of distaste on his features. “Good luck.”

Mitch smiles and slips his guitar over his shoulder where it rests comfortably against his abdomen. “I’ve done this a million times.”

“I know,” Harry suddenly feels stupid. “Just...break a leg.”

He bounds off to the bar for a drink after slapping Mitch on the shoulder, his cheeks warm. Clare has a tall glass in her hands, and half of it is already gone.

“Make a fucking move already,” she tells him, voice barely distinguishable over the crowd. “I’d like to see at least one of us happy.”

Harry shakes his head. “You’re just making this harder on yourself. You know that, right?”

Clare opens her mouth wide with a retort when the bartender creeps up behind them and announces, “is there anyone here named Clare _Uchima_?”

Clare half turns on her chair and looks the old grizzled man in the face. “Who’s asking?”

He looks down at her. “You got a phone call, young lady. Telephone’s over by the bathroom.”

Clare scrunches her face up at Harry before hopping down and disappearing around the corner. She returns just when Ricky Devereux announces they’re going to be starting their set soon. The crowd parts to reveal the band, and this time they don’t even have a stage to stand on.

When Clare sits back down and takes a sip of her drink he asks, “who was it?”

“Sarah,” she says bluntly, not looking away from the band across the floor. “She wants me to come over tonight.”

He looks at her strangely. “How’d she even get the number to this place?”

Clare shrugs, and Harry leaves it at that.

Mitch makes eye contact with the audience more than he ever has at Dickey’s Den that night. He also makes eye contact with Harry quite a few times as well, which in turn makes him try to avoid looking at the band best he can. It doesn’t work though, because time and time again Harry will find his gaze drifting back towards them to find Mitch already smiling at him from his spot near the drumset. He’s caught the lead singers eye a few times too, who makes an odd face at Harry before and shifting his focus elsewhere, to someone else in the audience. It makes Harry mildly uncomfortable, and by the end of the night he gets the creeping sense that the band knows more about him and Mitch than Harry was led to believe.

When the band starts packing up after ending on a song Harry has heard them perform at Dickey’s, Clare tries to make a break for it, but Harry catches her hand.

“I’m going with you,” he tells her firmly. He’s given her enough space, he thinks.

“Where are y’all off to?” Mitch sneaks up behind them, olive green jacket already on and buttoned and his guitar case dangling from his left hand. The hair that sticks out from beneath his cap is slick with sweat. This club is disgustingly hot and Harry aches to be outside already. He lost the ability to take deep breaths about an hour ago.

“A friends,” Clare tells him, already trying to pull Harry towards the door.

Mitch looks drained, as he usually does after Cosmic Fire’s long-winded sets, but he finds himself asking him, “you should come with us.”

Clare stops her pulling and groans, shaking Harry’s hand off her. “H, she only invited me.”

But he knows by the waver in her voice she doesn’t want to be alone, not anymore. “Nah, it’ll be fun. The more the merrier.”

 

Mitch just barely gets away from the rest of the band when he tells them he’ll see them later, who tug at him and try to get him to come along to some movie they say they’re heading to. Mitch ends up winning though, much Ricky’s very obvious chagrin. Harry notices the way he watches the three of them leave from the back of the club with a distasteful curl to his lip. It leaves him feeling uncomfortable, but the way he can feel Mitch’s eyes on him from the back seat of Clare’s car the entire drive over to Sarah’s place soon makes him forget about it.

Sarah’s apartment has just barely enough room for all of them. Clare lets them in with the spare key she’s had for the last year and they step into what Harry could only describe as a shoebox. He’s never been here before. He had no idea what to expect.

The moment the door clicks shut behind them, Sarah pops her head around the corner leading into the kitchen, her long brunette ponytail tumbling over her shoulder and swaying by her elbow. Her eyes light up at the sight of them, and before Harry can even open his mouth to greet her, before Clare can even find her way towards the girl to give her a hug like he knows she wants to do, Sarah hurries past them and goes straight to Mitch.

At her noise of elation when her arms find their way around Mitch’s neck, Clare and Harry share a look, and reflected on his best friends face is a clear look of _“what the fuck?”_

He risks a glance at the two, and Mitch is beaming and patting Sarah’s back. He looks away, trains his eyes on the manila-colored carpet instead. They break apart moments later, though Sarah keeps her hand on Mitch’s elbow.

“I didn't know you guys knew each other!”

Clare twists her face into something very conspicuous. “Touché.” And looking to Harry she says, “what the fuck is going on?”

Sarah laughs despite Clare being deadly serious. She looks up at Mitch with shining eyes. Mitch returns the look and it makes bile rise up Harry’s throat.

“We met at the mall, of all places. In the food court while Mitch was there with his friends.”

Harry glances at Clare, and it all clicks. Clare looks like she’s going to cry, which is not a look Harry sees very often on her. This is the guy Sarah seems to be smitten with, the one that has caused Clare such pain. Harry suddenly doesn't want to be here, and he can't understand why.

“Well, come on! I made lasagna with extra ricotta, just how you like it,” Sarah touches Clare's shoulder as she says it, then tugs Mitch into the kitchen by the hand. "I'm so glad I made enough!"

“Excuse me,” Clare says, and hurries into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. He can hear the fan turn on moments later, then the faucet.

Harry toes his shoes off on the mat near the door and hangs his jacket over one of the chairs at the small table near the window and then stands awkwardly in the middle of the living room. Sarah’s apartment is quite small and barren, with a television sat on an entertainment stand across from a large leather couch, a four-chaired table tucked up against the two windows, and a bookcase in the opposite corner. There’s a bedroom to the right of the bathroom when you step into the hallway, if you can even call it a hallway, and the kitchen, which Harry feels if he were to peek around the corner he would probably find Sarah and Mitch nearly on top of each other in the small space. He stays where he is.

Clare emerges from the bathroom moments after Sarah and Mitch step out of the kitchen. Sarah is carrying the lasagna in a steaming glass dish with a pair of oven mitts, and in Mitch’s hands is a bowl of what looks to be Brussel sprouts and a plate of garlic bread. After the food is deposited on the table by the windows, Sarah hurries back into the kitchen with the oven mitts and returns with a bottle of cabernet and a stack of plates topped with a bundle of silverware.

“Alright!” she says after pouring everyone a full glass of the deep read drink. “Let's eat!”

They all take a seat at the table, and amidst the scraping of utensils against glass, against porcelain, Mitch says with a smile that makes Harry’s stomach twist with a feeling he can’t decipher, “isn’t Sarah’s cooking the best?”

Clare drinks half of her glass of wine in one go. Harry nudges his foot against her ankle beneath the table in a show of solidarity. He thinks he knows what she’s feeling and that in itself is pretty fucking scary.

He realizes too many awkward seconds of silence have already passed, so Harry says brightly, “yeah, her peach cobbler is killer.”

Sarah simpers under all the praise, spearing a roasted Brussel sprout on her fork and bringing it to her mouth. They eat in silence for the most part. Whereas Mitch and Sarah are munching happily on their food, Clare is pushing hers around her plate, and Harry takes painstakingly slow bites.

“Thanks again for the flowers,” Sarah says to Harry, which surprises him, considering how she hasn’t thanked him for them since the first few times. “I made so much potpourri I ended up giving some to Mitch.

Clare sinks further into her chair. Harry glances to Mitch, who's smiling and sipping from his glass. “Ricky won’t stop giving me shit for it; says the hotel room smells like,” his voice drops, “something I’m not comfortable repeating.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed the roses,” Harry says, bitterly, then feels guilty when Mitch scrunches his brows up at him in what looks to be hurt.

When their plates are licked clean, the dishes half-empty, Clare is already pulling her shoes back on. They haven't even been here an hour but he gets the sense she’s wanted to leave since they arrived.

“Going so soon?” Sarah asks as she and Mitch begin carrying the dishes back into the kitchen. Her mouth turns down as she watches Clare. “You just got here.”

“Not feeling too good,” Clare says tersely. “Gonna head home. Harry?”

Harry is suddenly torn between going back to the apartment with Clare and staying with Mitch. But eventually, he places a hand on Clare's shoulder and steers her towards the door.

“I think she's coming down with something. Been feeling off all week.” Which isn’t exactly a lie.

Now Mitch’s face drops, and Harry wills his stomach not to drop with it. He and Sarah nod forlornly, sharing a look that reminds Harry of him and Clare.

“Okay, well,” Sarah squeezes Clare's shoulder, dragging her hand down her arm, stopping just above her wrist. “Feel better. Thanks for stopping by.”

Clare nods, eyes cast to her shoes, and Harry thinks she really does look ill all of a sudden.

The two of them thank Sarah and Mitch as they're stepping out of the door, and when they're buckled up into Clare's car, she flicks the radio on full volume, face stoic. Harry keeps his hand on her thigh the entire ride home. When they get back to the apartment, Clare sheds her jacket and boots haphazardly by the door and heads immediately into the kitchen. Harry watches her hesitantly as he straightens up her clothes, and hangs his coat neatly, tucks his shoes by the door. He watches as she pulls a pint of ice cream from the freezer, grabs a spoon from the cutlery drawer, and stalks over to the couch.

Harry joins her when she flicks on the television, passing through the channels with an angry finger on the remote control until finally stopping on a rerun of some cop show she claims she doesn't like. She spoons a glob of the ice cream into her mouth then passes the utensil to Harry wordlessly. When he hands it back to her, he says, “are you okay?”

And that’s when she cracks, breaking down into tears and crawling into Harry's lap like a child. Harry doesn't remember the last time he saw her cry. It's very disconcerting. He takes the carton of ice cream and sets it on the cushion beside him, wrapping Clare up in his arms and rocking her slowly. He shushes her once, twice, until finally her crying subsides to pathetic little sniffles. Harry thinks she's fallen asleep when she falls silent, then Clare pulls back, picking her head up from his chest and wiping the sleeves of her shirt over her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says, voice thick. She swallows. “What a baby, huh?”

She laughs derisively, which comes out sounding more like another sob than anything, and Harry rubs her back.

“That kind of sucked,” he admits.

She nods. “What are the odds. Our crushes are dating each other.”

He doesn't even pretend she's wrong. He feels just as heartbroken as she does.

 

Clare stays home from work the next day, and Harry wants nothing more than to do the same, not having slept much between consoling each other and watching TV, but he figures he can't just bail on Nick like that, so he begrudgingly heads to the café.

Deacon is the first to notice Harry’s sour mood, and gifts him a bouquet of tiger lilies. Harry almost cries, and hides his face in the sweet-smelling flowers the rest of the way. When he steps into the cafe, it’s to find Mesh sitting on the counter beside the cash register, Nick hidden from view between his legs. At the little chime above the door, the two men split apart, Mesh nearly falling off the counter, but when they spot Harry they just laugh, cheeks bright and lips shiny.

“Good morning, Sue!” Nick exclaims casually, arm wrapped around Mesh’s side. Mesh looks bashfully down at the floor.

“Hey,” Harry says, setting the wrapped bouquet of flowers on the counter where Mesh sat. “Put these in water, will you?”

He ignores the way their eyes follow him into the office.

When he reemerges Mesh is gone, and Nick has clipped the bouquet of lilies and stuffed them into the mason jar that houses the other flowers, the ones that Deacon gave him and Mitch. He frowns at the sight. Nick busies himself with arranging and rearranging the flowers as Harry wraps an apron around himself, and he disappears into the kitchen before Nick can ask the question he knows is sitting on his tongue. The air is thick with it and he just wants to get away.

He's not even sure why he’s so hurt over the fact that Mitch and Sarah are dating. He’d say it’s because Clare is heartbroken over it, but he knows that’s not solely it. He knew from the moment he met Mitch that he was basically off limits as a traveling musician ( _traveling_ being the key word) so what’s his problem? How did he manage to get his feelings hurt anyway? He shouldn’t even be surprised; it wouldn’t have worked out anyway.

“Harry?” Nick calls cautiously.

Harry sighs, poking his face through the window fully ready to tell his friend off, but in his line of sight stands Mitch, hands in the back pockets of his pants, smiling at him like he hasn’t a care in the world. Nick is glancing warily between the two of them.

“Hey, there,” Mitch says, waving. “How’s Clare?”

“Peachy,” Harry tells him, trying his best to keep any bite out of his voice. It’s not Mitch’s fault anyway, nor Sarah’s.

“Cool, Sarah was worried about her. Hey, uh, I just wanted to let you know we’re playing at Dickey’s again tonight. Adam loves us and we wanted some extra cash before we hit the road.”

“You’re still leaving?” Harry finds himself asking, stupidly. He figured after the revelation of him dating Sarah he would stay, or is he taking her with him? Away from Clare?

Mitch cocks his head. Nick flees into the back office.

“Well, yeah.”

He watches Harry curiously, hands still in his pockets. Harry bites his tongue before more nonsense can spill out.

“So...see you tonight?”

Harry finds himself telling Mitch, “yeah, see you then.”

 

When the sun slips beneath the horizon and the temperature drops to a degree that warrants more than just a jacket, Harry sneaks out of the apartment while Clare is showering and catches a cab to the bar. The band is mid-song when he steps inside, and Mitch’s face breaks out in what could only be a relieved smile when he catches sight of Harry over by the door. Harry salutes him with two fingers and stuffs his knitted cap beneath his belt. He takes a seat at the bar and orders a drink, something bright and fruity that has him sucking on his teeth after a few sips. He keeps his back to the band, feeling much like a petty child, and only looks back at them a few times when Mitch plays a particularily loud chord in an obvious attempt to get Harry’s attention.

Harry knocks back the last dregs of his drink just as the husky voice of Ricky Devereux tells the whistling crowd they’re going to step outside for a quick smoke break. He can hear the slamming of the door despite the noise level of the bar. He orders a refill of his drink, and just as the sticky rim of the glass is barely touching his lip the soft, melodic plucking of an acoustic guitar tickles Harry’s ears and his blood runs cold.

He listens intently, glass held near his mouth, unmoving, and as the crowd quiets down Harry recognizes the song to be his own. It’s the first song he and Mitch polished off together, the one Mitch wanted to read the most, the one that made Nick cry when he first wrote it. Harry lowers his drink to the counter, staring unseeingly at Adam’s hands as the bartender listens to Mitch play.

Just when Harry is about to turn on the stool, Mitch begins to sing. His voice is high and sweet and Harry doesn’t think he breathes the entire time. The room is nearly silent, and Harry’s hands are shaking as he listens to his lyrics being sung so loud to so many people. When Mitch stops singing, and his fingers still on his guitar, the room is still quiet, and Harry grips his glass so hard it may actually shatter. And then everyone starts to clap, slow at first, then faster.

“That was written by a good friend of mine,” Mitch says into the microphone over the cheering. “He’s over there at the bar.”

Harry swallows a gulp of his drink that has his throat burning. A few strange hands clap him on the back, though Harry doesn’t make eye contact with anyone. Finally Harry turns on his chair, taking his drink with him. The rest of the band are all back on stage now, looking less than pleased as they settle back in with their instruments. He catches Mitch’s gaze and can feel his whole body start to sweat. A few patrons in the crowd are still looking at him, nodding their heads in drunken approval. Harry wants to crawl under the bar, but he can’t stop smiling.

The group only plays two more songs before the lead singer is announcing they’re calling it a night. Confusion is written over Mitch’s face, and Harry is sure it’s mirrored on his own. The band begins packing up quickly like they can’t get out of their fast enough, Mitch more slowly, glancing in Harry’s direction with a furrow between his brows every now and again. His bandmates hurry out the door, their instruments and equipment banging noisly against the doorway as they go. Harry braces himself as Mitch tugs his cap on and hops off the stage with his guitar cases in each hand. When he reaches the bar, taking their money from Adam who already had his hand outstretched over the counter, he tells Harry, “I’ll be back in like five minutes.”

Mitch is gone for longer than five minutes. When his watch tells him it’s been close to fifteen Harry starts to worry that the band up and left already, that Mitch took Harry’s song with him. So he gets up, terrified at the prospect of having his work stolen right out from under his nose like Nick’s blind date attempted, and leaves the bar. When Harry barges through the back door like a madman he’s not met with an empty lot like he was anticipating, but instead with the scene of Ricky punching Mitch square in the jaw and knocking him to the asphalt.

Harry cries out in surprise, letting the door slam shut behind him. The band, who were starting in on Mitch like a pack of wild dogs going in for the kill, stop and look at him. Ricky takes a smoldering cigarette from between his lips and flicks ash at his feet, almost hitting Mich with it. He points the cigarette at Harry accusingly.

“This is a band conversation,” he tells him gruffly. “Stay out of it.”

Geoff and T.J. crowd into Harry’s space then, slamming their hands into his shoulders, trying to push him back through the door and into the bar.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch him!” Mitch yells, pulling himself onto his feet with one hand on the hood of their janky old van and the other cradling his jaw. He reaches for T.J. and Geoff, pulling them off Harry and shoving them over to Ricky. He stands in front of Harry protectively.

“Now, Mitchy,” Ricky says, sauntering over to the two of them, sucking on his cigarette. When he gets close enough, he punches his bandmate in the jaw in nearly the exact spot he got him. Ricky staggers back, the cigarette falling from his mouth and landing at his feet.

_“Don’t call me that.”_

Geoff latches onto Ricky defensively, scowling at Mitch. T.J. puffs out his chest, a hilarious look for such a skinny guy, and cracks Mitch in the nose. Harry is almost headbutted with the blow and he grabs Mitch’s arms to steady him. He steps out from behind Mitch and stands at his side, keeping an arm around his waist.

T.J. curls his lips back in a venomous smile, crossing his arms over his chest. Harry swallows.

“You can’t possibly prefer _him_ over us.”

“In the few weeks I’ve known Harry I’ve had a better time than the year I’ve known you assholes,” Mitch spits back. “And I’m a better drummer than you’ll ever be, Tommy.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Ricky shouts. Geoff holds onto him a little tighter, shooting daggers in Mitch and Harry’s direction. “You won’t make it without us, man. You quit on us now and you’ll go back to washing dishes at fucking Pizza Hut.”

A chill runs down Harry’s spine at the pure disgust in the man's voice. How did Mitch put up with these guys for so long?

“You’re the ones who aren’t gonna last,” Mitch retorts. He wipes the steady dribble of blood seeping from his nostrils on the back of his hand. “I’m the only one with fucking talent in this mess y’all call a band.”

And with that Mitch grabs Harry’s bicep in a grip that actually hurts and pulls him back through the bar and out the front door. He flags down a taxicab and gives the cabbie Harry’s address, which surprises him. They ride in silence, Mitch sniffling the whole while and holding the neckline of his shirt up to his nose to staunch the bleeding.

The apartment is silent when they enter, the moon coming in through the bay window and the nightlight plugged into the socket beside the microwave the only source of light. Clare’s door is wide open strange enough, so Harry holds his finger to his lips as he guides Mitch across the floor to the bathroom between the two bedrooms. He locks the door behind them and flicks on the light. They both squint at each other.

Mitch looks a bit worse for wear; his nose is swollen and bloody, his lip is split in the corner, and there's a wicked bruise blooming on his jaw.

“How bad is it?” He jokes, sniffling again, and cranes his neck to look in the mirror over the sink. “Sheesh.”

Harry tugs at his hair and rummages around in the cabinet for the first aid kit. He teased Clare when she insisted on putting one together when they first moved in, but now he's thankful. He sits on the closed lid of the toilet and props open the plastic latchbox on his lap. Inside is a carton of Band-Aids in all different shapes and sizes, tiny packets of ointments and creams, antiseptic wipes, gauze, wraps, and a little clear case of silver tools. He grabs three packs of the wipes and stands, setting the kit on the toilet.

Mitch is leaning up against the sink, hands crossed loosely over his stomach as he watches Harry with tired, expectant eyes. Harry stands close enough that the tips of their shoes are touching, and he can smell sweat clinging to Mitch. It leaves his cheeks shiny, his hair damp.

“It doesn't look broken,” he tells him.

Mitch reaches up to poke at his nose. “Thank god. It's my best feature; if it was crooked everyone and their mother would be able to tell.”

Harry smiles weakly, ripping open a packet of wipes and throwing the wrapper in the trashcan by the toilet. When he looks back at Mitch, he puts his hand on his side, resting his palm flat in the space between his ribs and the soft skin of his hips. Harry bites the inside of his cheek.

“Sorry they ruffed you up a bit,” he says earnestly, quietly.

“They did you in worse.”

Harry wipes at the congealed blood beneath Mitch’s nose, stuck in his mustache, with careful strokes of his fingertip.

“Not the first time.”

Harry frowns but says nothing. He wants to ask what the fight was about, but in his gut he already knows. And he doesn't want to hear it said out loud. He throws away the soiled wipe and rips open another one. With that one he cleans up the dried blood at the corner of Mitch’s mouth, careful not to touch the angry cut on his lip.

“They liked your song,” Mitch says after a few silent moments.

Harry busies himself with cleaning up and putting away the first aid kit, avoiding the man's gaze. When he's washing his hands Mitch touches his back gently.

“Are you mad at me?”

Harry can't help the laugh that escapes him, and he shakes his head. Leave it to Mitch to worry about Harry being angry with him while he's standing in his bathroom with blood staining his shirt and bruises on his face. Harry’s frustration seeps out of him then, though he supposes it left the moment he saw Mitch take a fist to the face.

“I didn't know you could sing so well,” he replies instead, turning back to face Mitch and drying his hands on his pants. “And you drum too?”

Mitch watches him for a beat or two, conflict clear on his features. But eventually he shrugs. “Guess I'm a triple threat.”

“You know, you really don't need Cosmic Fire. You could be a one man band and make it just fine.”

Mitch prods at the split in his lip and Harry has to shove his hands in the shallow pockets of his pants as not to bat his fingers away like a mother scolding her child.

Mitch shrugs. He spreads his palms out on the edge of the porcelain sink. The blood on his white shirt has dried stiff and dark.

“I hope you don't mind me singing your song. I just—” he cuts himself off, clamping his mouth shut. Harry thinks he knows what he was going to say though.

“It's okay. I never would have had the balls to do something like that. Thank you, really,” Harry reaches forward with his foot and nudges Mitch’s. “We make quite a pair.”

Mitch looks at him strangely, and before Harry knows it he's being pressed up against the door and Mitch’s tongue is halfway down his throat. It tastes faintly of copper but Harry finds himself melting into it. It's when Mitch’s hand snakes around Harry's neck does he pull away, palms against Mitch’s chest.

“What about Sarah?” He asks, swallowing. His fingers shake against Mitch’s shirt.

Mitch laughs in confusion. His lips are cherry red but it's not from the blood. “What about her?”

Harry lets his hands drop to his sides. “You're dating her.”

Mitch take a minuscule step back then. His cheeks are pink in a way Harry has never seen before. He's sure he probably looks the same.

“ _What?_ No I’m not. She likes Clare. But, you know, _you're_ with Clare,” Mitch backs up until he's bumping into the sink. He groans. “Fuck, I shouldn't have kissed you like that, I’m sorry—”

 _“What?”_ Harry squawks. He doesn't even try to keep his voice down. “We’re not dating!”

Mitch stares at him, eyes wide and bloodshot. Then he's bursting out into bewildered laughter, and Harry follows suit. And then they're kissing again, and this time Harry doesn't pull away.

 

Harry wakes to fervent knocking on his bedroom door. He opens it, bleary-eyed and weak-limbed to Clare standing there with Mitch’s bloody shirt held out between two pinched fingers.

“What the fuck is this?” She asks, alarm and disgust clear on her sleep-addled features.

Harry leans against the doorway to his room. “It’s Mitch’s.”

_“Mitch?”_

“Morning, there.”

Mitch rises from the couch like a vampire from a coffin, rubbing at his eyes. His hair is beyond help and the bridge of his nose is swollen and a deep purple. Clare spins on her heel and gapes where Mitch sits with his arm slung over the back of the couch. She turns back to Harry.

“What the fuck is going on?”

He smirks at her, feeling euphoric and giddy despite the early hour. “Mitch thought we were dating.”

“Harry thought me and Sarah were dating,” Mitch chimes in.

Clare looks between the two of them, her thin brows furrowed and her lips parted with a question. “So...we’re all single then?” she asks cautiously.

Harry shrugs heavily, not meeting Mitch’s eye and not being able to wipe the smile from his face.

Clare suddenly drops the soiled shirt to the floor and bolts from the apartment barefoot and in her pajamas. Harry at once knows where she’s off too, and he shouts “shoot your shot!” Before the door shuts behind her. He’s thankful she at least has pants on this time.

Harry and Mitch are left staring at each other from across the living room then, and Mitch slowly untangles his long limbs from his borrowed blankets. Harry holds his breath as he pads across the wood floor to where Harry stands. There’s caution in his step, apprehension in the way he crosses his arms high over his chest, like the time Harry first saw him that morning outside the café. When he's within reach Harry pulls him in with hands fisted in the shirt he'd lent Mitch before they'd both said goodnight. Harry stretches slightly on his tiptoes to press his mouth to Mitch’s. And as Mitch winds his arms around Harry’s waist, he thinks, _I guess I got my answer in regards to_ is he, isn't he _._

And the thought makes Harry pull away, and Mitch chases after his lips before blinking his tired eyes open and looking at Harry inquisitively.

“Are you going to cut every kiss short?”

“What are we doing?” Harry asks him bluntly. Mitch looks genuinely dumbfounded and it takes everything in Harry not to just kiss him again and forget what he wants to talk about, what they  _need_ to talk about. “Will this survive long distance?”

Mitch sighs. He doesn't pull his hands from Harry's waist and the touch is warm and comforting. Harry doesn't know how he lasted so long without such a touch. “I don't know where I'm going,” Mitch admits with a shrug of his shoulders. “I don't want to have to go back to my suffocating parents in my suffocating hometown and start over, nor do I want to beg Rick for forgiveness. You know?”

Harry nods. He thinks he does know, to an extent.

“I guess I'm staying put for the time being,” his grip tightens as he says it. “I really like it here, and I really like you.”

Harry swallows. “How is it not suffocating here? What makes this town and the one you're from so different?”

“You,” he says simply, and it feels like a punch to the gut in the best way possible. “You're like a breath of fresh air.”

The way he says it, so soft and breathy like he's telling Harry a secret, makes him feel all gooey inside, like a lovestruck teenager or something. The way his heart constricts in his chest every time he's in the same vicinity as Mitch should terrify him, but instead it just feels familiar. _Right._

Harry, overcome with a tingling sensation and not trusting himself to open his mouth lest something embarrassing tumbles out, pulls Mitch back in for another kiss, one that’s soft and sweet and long overdue. Eventually though, Mitch pulls away, calloused hands cradling Harry’s jaw in such a way that makes Harry feel like a china doll. He relaxes into the touch and pretends like this is going to last forever.

“I should probably get my stuff before the guys do something stupid like have a bonfire.”

“Where are you going to go?” Harry asks, though he knows the answer. He just wants to hear it.

“Well, I was hoping I could stay here, just until I figure out what I’m doing.”

“I would like that.” _Very much._

 

The Motel 6 the cab pulls up to is small and nearly deserted and Harry would assume it was closed down were it not for the smattering of cars at the far end of the parking lot. The cabbie parks near the office, and Harry climbs out wordlessly after Mitch. When he rounds the car and falls into step at Mitch’s side he grabs Harry’s hand, slotting their fingers together, and smiles at him.

Mitch walks Harry down the long expanse of building, and stops short at the second to last door. On the small walkway beneath the copper awning sits a vinyl suitcase, overturned and spilling at the seams. Harry cocks his head and notes _M. Rowland_ written in black ink on the tag attacked to the handle. Mitch drops his hand and squats before the bag. He begins to stuff the items that have spilled out—a hairbrush and some other tchotchkes Harry doesn’t have time to identify—and zips the bag up noisily. Mitch jiggles the doorknob to the room, and when he finds it to be locked up tight he turns and looks out at the parking lot, jaw clenched and squinting against the bright mid-morning sun.

“Bastards,” is all Mitch says before picking up his suitcase and carrying it back to the cab.

“They just left without you?”

Mitch knocks thrice on the hood of the trunk and it pops open. He throws the bag inside. “I shouldn’t even be surprised.”

“They  _stranded_ you,” Harry stresses. “How could they do that? What would happen if you hadn’t met me? Or Sarah? Or even Adam?”

Mitch slams the trunk, startling Harry more than he'd like to admit. “You don’t know them like I do. They threatened to leave my ass behind in three different bumfuck towns.”

“It’s my fault, isn't it?”

All the frustration bleeds out of Mitch on an exhale, and his shoulders sag with it. He scrubs a hand down his face, wincing as his fingers brush over his nose. He leans up against the back of the car beside Harry.

“I've been looking for a way out for a while now,” and looking to Harry, says, “I'm glad they left me here. Anywhere else I would've gotten a bus right back home.”

Harry grabs his hand and squeezes.

“So,” Mitch says after a few beats of silence passes, listening to the rush of traffic on the highway behind them, “know anyone who’s hiring?”

 

It's the beginning of winter now. Clare has moved into Sarah's one bedroom apartment and Mitch took Clare's place (although he didn't take her room). Mitch took a job at a music store a few blocks away from the apartment and performs at Dickey's Den every Friday and Saturday night as a semi-permanent resident. He hasn’t once heard from his (former) bandmates, but it doesn’t seem to bother him much. He’s just thankful they left his guitars behind before they peeled out.

Harry still writes, more now than now with the guidance of Mitch, and they spend their nights creating together, much like they did before, but now they kiss between songs instead of smiling bashfully and clinking glasses. Harry thinks he's living in a dream. He even sings now, for Nick and Clare and even Sarah. With Mitch at his side they've stopped badgering him so much about trying to get his name out there. They just like to see him happy, or so they claim.

A few weeks before the holidays arrive the gang decides to have a little get-together at the bar for Mesh’s birthday, but of course he and Nick are late. Clare has called their place three times already from the payphone out on the curb but each time she came back to the table with a helpless shrug. At this rate they’re all going to be completely drunk by the time they arrive. Clare is on her second drink already, and Harry can only nurse his bottle of beer for so long.

Just as Harry is about to get up to ring a fourth time, the door is flung open, startling the tables in the vicinity. In comes Nick carrying Mesh bridal-style, and at the sight of the two men Sarah bursts into laughter and hides her face in Clare’s neck.

“Here comes the birthday boy!” Mitch announces where he’s sat on a rickety little barstool up on the stage. He strums a bit of the “Wedding March”, which makes Nick stumble and nearly drop the poor boy. When they reach the table, Mesh crawls out of Nick’s arms and into Harry’s lap, Harry, trembling with laughter, tries his best to save the both of them from toppling onto the floor.

“Good of you to finally show up,” Harry says, kissing Mesh on the forehead like he’s cradling a baby. Nick squeezes the back of his neck and takes one of the empty seats. Eventually Mesh crawls into his own seat. Both their cheeks are ruddy and they smell horribly of alcohol which leads Harry to believe they had their own fun before stopping by. The thought makes Harry’s own cheeks flush.

When they’re all seated with fresh drinks, Mitch clears his throat into the microphone. The room grows quiet. Mitch strums his guitar once and proceeds to sing a very sultry rendition of “Happy Birthday” not unlike Marylin Monroe. Mesh and Nick find it hilarious, and barely contain their laughter through the performance. When Mitch is finished and the crowd is whistling he throws Harry a wink and stands from his chair.

“And now, my friends,” Mitch says to the crowd. Clare whoops. “I have a little surprise for Mister Meshach on his birthday.”

Nick says “that’s you!” and grabs Mesh’s jaw for an open-mouthed kiss. Harry’s eyes go wide and he looks to see if anyone is watching, but he supposes it doesn’t really matter. After so many months of coming here no one seems to mind anymore. When he looks back to the stage, Mitch is holding out his hand.

“Harry?”

Harry stands from the table with a shake of his head and Clare thumps him on the shoulder hard enough he almost goes careening back into it. When he’s crawled up onto the shallow stage with the help of Mitch, he says away from the mic, “I thought we weren’t going to do this?”

“Why not?” is all Mitch says back before pressing his lips close to the microphone again. “We wrote this song last weekend. It doesn’t have a title yet, though.”

Harry flushes when a ripple of laughter goes through the bar. Mitch begins strumming his guitar, propping his leg up on the rung of the wooden stool, and Harry clenches his sweaty hands around the microphone stand. He’s sung up here alongside Mitch only a few times before, and after much begging, and every time feels like the first. He swallows, shuts his eyes against the overheads, and opens his mouth.

The minute the song is over Mitch is pulling him in for a kiss, and the cheering grows that much louder. Mesh and Nick are making absolute fools of themselves, stomping their feet and banging their fists on the table. Harry feels like he’s on fire when Mitch pulls him by the hand over to the bar for a drink.

“That was ridiculous,” Adam tells them, already pushing two glasses towards them. “Here, on the house. I have to bring Emi here one night so she can hear you guys play.”

“Thanks, man,” Mitch tells him with a grateful nod and squeezes Harry’s shoulder.

When Adam steps away to tend to a group of girls that just bustled in and settled at the end of the bar, a man in a maroon sweater and slacks siddles up to Harry’s side.

“Evening, fellas,” he says, smiling bright and business-like. “That was some performance.”

“Thank you,” Harry says politely, and takes a sip of his drink, eyes never leaving the man.

“Are you guys a duo?”

Mitch glances at Harry with a wry smile. “Yeah.”

The man nods thoughtfully, running a hand through his thinning hair. “I’m visiting family for the holidays but I would love to see you two in L.A.”

He hands Harry a white business card between two fingers and slips away without another word. Harry watches him go in interest, and when he flips over the piece of cardstock, printed below the stranger's name are the words _Record Producer_. Harry’s breath hitches in his throat and he looks up at Mitch. At first he thinks this is Nick's doing, but something tells him it's not.

Mitch looks similar to how Harry feels, and he says, “huh. Maybe I’m headed to California after all.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: iesbianjedi  
> tumblr: harryswilde


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